Assessing the impact of readability on translation quality and productivity

Clients like government departments commission large volumes of translation into community languages. However, they are not aware that there is a lack of qualified translators in some languages, or of the difficulty of the source texts. It is important to measure how text complexity affects translation quality and time. This will make it possible for Language Service Providers and freelance translators to suggest to the client to have difficult texts simplified. The client can then ask for a simplified version of the document to be translated. Our aim is to demonstrate how text complexity affects translation quality and cost.